Of
This and That

by
Thomas A. Droleskey

With the press
of business of Christ the King College, both administrative and instructional,
occupying the bulk of my time these days, articles on this site have
become a scarce commodity, in case you have not noticed this fact. On
this great feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, though, I do want
to post this article (and another one later on this evening) in between
recording lectures for my own Politics I course.

As I noted
in my final article for the Seattle Catholic site a few weeks ago, there
comes a time when commenting on the obvious becomes redundant, if not
counterproductive. Even though there have been a number of items I would
have written commentaries on had I not been so occupied with College
business, the plain fact of the matter is that I have written on most
of these matters before. Thus, I am going to use this space to offer
a few brief reflections on some recent events.

Roger Cardinal
Mahony and Liturgical Abuses: The Most Reverend
Roger Cardinal Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, has said recently
that the new Vatican instruction on liturgical abuses in the Novus
Ordo Missae do not apply to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles because
there are no such abuses in its parishes. In a manner of speaking, Cardinal
Mahony is correct. As the few non-fungible norms contained in the General
Instruction to the Roman Missal (which is the subject of my forthcoming
book, GIRM Warfare) can admit of various interpretations and
applications given the exigencies of the "inculturation" of
the Gospel, Cardinal Mahony is correct when he says there are no liturgical
abuses in his archdiocese. He is correct, that is, unless he wants to
admit that the Novus Ordo Missae is the liturgical abuse that
was foisted on Latin Rite Catholics by Pope Paul VI in 1969. All truly
unauthorized experimentations and innovations stem from the abuse that
is the Novus Ordo Missae. Are there any more questions? Cardinal
Mahony is right to consider himself a liturgical law unto himself as
this is what was envisioned in Paragraph 22 of the first document issued
by the Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, on December
1, 1963. Paragraph 22 called for the devolution of liturgical decision-making
from the Vatican to the episcopal level (both national and diocesan).
All efforts to establish "order" in the new order of the Mass
are bound to fail as the new order of Mass itself is a departure from
the sure path that is found in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.

Roger
Cardinal Mahony and Abusive Priests: A judge has order the
aforementioned Cardinal Mahony to turn over the personnel files of priests
who are alleged to have engaged in the physical abuse, perverted and
otherwise, of children. His Eminence is resisting, citing the rights
of the Church to protect its records against intrusion by the civil
state. In a manner of speaking, this is somewhat similar to the stand
taken by Saint Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, against
King Henry II. Saint Thomas insisted that clerics who were suspected
of civil offenses be tried in ecclesiastical, not civil, courts. There
is a little difference, however: Saint Thomas was going to try miscreant
clerics, not seek to shield them from further investigation. Saint Thomas
was not going to reaffirm clerics who had given scandal in their sins.
He was going to punish them if found guilty. Cardinal Mahony's stonewalling
the civil authorities continues a pattern of stonewalling parishioners
about the possibilities of physical harm to their children posed by
priests prone to perversion who may have been enable by his policies.

More
importantly than the physical abuse of children (and adults) by priests
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the spiritual abuse of
all Catholics by Cardinal Mahony and his chancery factotums. The Vatican
continues to turn a blind eye to the promotion of theological dissent
and outright heresies in Catholic schools and religious education programs.
The spiritual abuse of Catholics by bishops and priests and consecrated
religious is what makes more possible the toleration of instances of
physical abuse. The fact that the Holy Father and his curial cardinals
do not remove archbishops such as Cardinal Mahony should tell us that
they are less interested in protecting souls than the civil authorities
in California are interested in protected bodies. Such is the state
of the postconciliar Church, however.

Reading
Vatican Tea Leaves: Although the commentary I hope to post
later this evening will deal with a decision of a court in The Netherlands
permitting the murdering of children by means of "euthanasia"
up to twelve years of age if they have some incurable condition, I do
want to discuss the issue of children in their mothers' wombs in the
context of remarks about voting made by the Prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

One
of the principal problems of the regime of novelty that was ushered
in by conciliarism is ambiguity. It was never the case prior to the
Second Vatican Council that Church documents contained within their
texts language that was so ambiguous that it could be interpreted quite
legitimately in a variety of different ways. While the Catholic Church
has always made careful philosophical and theological distinctions in
her documents and teachings, she never countenanced abject uncertainty
as part of her magisterial and pastoral life. No one can debate the
meaning of an encyclical letter, say, of Pope Leo XIII, although a Catholic
could disagree about the application of its terms in concrete circumstances.
There has been nothing but debate about the documents of Vatican II
and the statements made by the Holy See, especially those made by our
current Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.

One
of the latest points of ambiguity has arisen as a result of the Note
Bene Cardinal Ratzinger included in his letter to the American
bishops about principles concerning the denial of Holy Communion to
Catholics who support the execution of innocent preborn children. The
Note Bene indicated that a Catholic who is pro-life could vote
for a pro-abortion politician if he did so for proportionate reasons
in spite of the candidate's pro-abortion position. This is the text
of His Eminence's Note Bene:

N.B.
A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy
to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote
for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand
on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate's
stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate
for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which
can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.

Some commentators,
including me, have interpreted this Note Bene to mean that
one could licitly vote for a thoroughly pro-abortion politician if one
has proportionate reasons to do so and one does not intend to support
the politician's pro-abortion positions. Others, though, including some
in the pro-life establishment who do not make any exceptions to the
inviolability of innocent hunan life, are asserting that Cardinal Ratzinger's
Note Bene referred to the situation wherein a voter is faced with the
prospect of voting for two candidates, each of whom supports abortion.
In this instance, these interpreters assert, Cardinal Ratzinger is saying
that one may have a proportionate reason for voting for the candidate
who supports some exceptions to the inviolability of innocent human
life as opposed to a candidate who supports all abortions in all instances
without exceptions or qualifications. Huh? Has Cardinal Ratzinger said
this? Has he made this clarification himself? With all due respect to
people who are asserting that the Ratzinger Note Bene is meant
to apply to the "lesser of two evils" scenario, may I point
out that this is, absent any word from His Eminence himself, a bit like
reading tea leaves? Never before in the history of the Catholic Church
have we had to strain to understand what a pope meant when he made some
pronouncement. And most curial cardinals were out of sight and virtually
unknown to the average Catholic. The fact such figures are making statements
at all these days is a novelty that I discussed on this site in "Novelties
Beget Novelties."

Rather than
strain to put damaging Vatican statements in the best light possible,
prominent Catholics in the pro-life movement are going to have to make
a painful and very public choice between playing a dangerous game of
semantics in order to try to curry favor with the Vatican (and members
of the American hierarchy who are willing to deny the administration
of Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians) and stating that the
Vatican has worsened our situation by its embrace of naturalistic reasons
to oppose the killing of preborn babies. That is, the conciliarist embrace
of the secular regime and does not advocate the restoration of the Social
Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen advances the
inroads made by the forces of spiritual and physical death. Those pro-life
figures who know better must publicly embrace Tradition as the only
bulwark against the evils of Modernity and Modernism, and they must
further implore the Holy Father to consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful
and Immaculate Heart. Such a stand will lose financial support and perhaps
access to curial cardinals and to papal audiences. So what? Misleading
the faithful into thinking that the ambiguities contained in Vatican
documents don't exist or that they can be finessed in such a way as
to convey the actual truths of the Faith is a major disservice. Babies
are being killed in this country and around the world , both chemically
and surgically, as a result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of
Christ the King and the acceptance of this fact by the ethos of conciliarism,
which is enshrined in the Novus Ordo Missae.

The
Spirit of Assisi: The Holy Father has once again done the bidding
of Freemasonry by invoking the "Spirit of Assisi" in an address
that was sent to emissaries of the world's religions who had convened
in Milan to discuss the issue of world peace. This is part of what Pope
John Paul II wrote:

They
truly are not! Peace is possible always! We must always work together
to eradicate the seeds of bitterness and misunderstanding embedded in
culture and life, we must put all our efforts into eradicating humankind's
determination to prevail over the other, we need to work together to
erase the arrogance of asserting one's own interests disdaining the
identity of the other. These feelings are the harbingers of a world
of violence and war. But conflict is never unavoidable!

And religions have a specific task in reminding every man and every
woman of this awareness, a gift of God and, at the same time, the fruit
of centuries of historical experience. This is what I called "the
spirit of Assisi." Our world needs this spirit. It needs convictions
and behaviors that secure a solid peace to flow from this spirit, to
reinforce international institutions and promote reconciliation. The
"spirit of Assisi" urges religions to give their contribution
to the new humanism today's world needs so badly.

The world
needs the "spirit of Assisi"? We need to reinforce "international
institutions"? We need a "new humanism"? The grand master
of some Masonic lodge could invoke these words with perfect aplomb.
Indeed, a piece on this site, "There Can be No Peace Without Christ,"
discusses the falsity of the Pope's approach. All one needs to do to
point out the false, if not heretical, nature of the Holy Father's constant
appeal for peace without invoking the authority of the only institution
that can help men lessen conflicts in the world by means of the sanctifying
grace she makes available to them, the Catholic Church, is to quote
the following passages from Pope Pius XI's Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio,
issued in December of 1922:

When,
therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether
they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded
in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are
binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in
one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties
and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view
or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already
and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and,
especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions
which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other.
No merely human institution of today can be as successful
in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with
world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true
League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied
that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always
existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of
nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back
to the safe road.

There
exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations.
This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above
all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of
the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church
of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not
only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of
her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason
of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been
lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War,
cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It
is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of
Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the
fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe
the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private
life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound
foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely
given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results
therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

It
is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of
Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His
teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living
according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns
over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament
of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character
of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned
after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact,
it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15)
The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth,
and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy
Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize
and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine
origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the
basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty
to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble
all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position
in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized,
for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society
which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain,
must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository
and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher
and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense
that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in
its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority,
just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them
the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal
happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain
promoters of their happiness here below.

It
is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace
of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ--"the peace of Christ
in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing
all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom,
we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace. (Pope
Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, 1922.)

The
Spirit of Assisi is false. It is not Catholic. End of discussion of
the Spirit of Assisi.

Polling
for the Mass: Influenced by the ethos of Americanism, a lot
of well-meaning traditional Catholics fall prey now and then to polling
as a means of trying get little crumbs of the Faith, including the crumb
of a weekly offering of the Traditional Latin Mass by means of a highly
conditioned and totally unnecessary "indult" from a local
bishop, delivered up to them. Some very well-meaning Catholics recently
got all excited when a local newspaper asked the following question
for its daily Internet poll: "Would you attend a church service
in Latin?" Leaving aside the little fact that the restoration of
the Traditional Latin Mass is much more than a matter of the use of
the Latin language (which can be used in the Novus Ordo Missae,
obviously), Catholics must not advert to polls as a means of proving
this or that point. So what if seventy percent of the 430 respondents
to the particular poll cited above said that they would attend a "church
service" in Latin? What does this mean? Do they want the entirety
of the Catholic Faith that is best protected and expressed only in the
Traditional Latin Mass? Do they want the daily offering of the Mass
of our fathers without any unnecessary and unjust conditions? Do they
understand the inherent harm of the Novus Ordo Missae no matter
what language, including Latin, in which it is offered? So what if people
respond favorably to a poll that advances something we want. Can not
those who favor, say, women's ordination or contraception or divorce
and remarriage without a decree of nullity use polling as a means of
proving to ecclesiastical officials their own points? Catholics should
spend more time praying before the Blessed Sacrament and praying their
family Rosaries than participating in utterly meaningless polls that,
wittingly or unwittingly, gives credibility to the democratic and egalitarian
ethos within the Church as a manifestation of the heresy of Americanism.*

Lift
High the Cross: On this great feast day, the Exaltation of
the Holy Cross, we should bear the crosses of our own particular situation
at this point in the history of the true Church by standing by the foot
of the Holy Cross each day in the offering of the Traditional Latin
Mass. By doing so we will be keeping company with Our Lady, who is the
Mother of Sorrows, and all of the angels and saints. We must never grow
discouraged in the midst of our difficulties. God has known from all
eternity that we would be alive in these troubling times. The graces
He won for us by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood on the wood
of the Holy Cross are sufficient for us to deal with our individual
and ecclesiastical and civil crosses, each of which we should offer
up freely and spontaneously as consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful
and Immaculate Heart. It is only the path of the Holy Cross that leads
us to our own salvation. It is only when the Holy Cross is implanted
firmly in the hearts of all men and featured prominently in all aspects
of social, economic and political life in all countries around the world
as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart that there will
be a reign of authentic peace, Christ's peace, advancing both the temporal
and eternal good of all men everywhere.

Our
Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Pope
Saint Pius X, the powerful foe of Modernism, pray for us.

Pope
Saint Pius V, pray that those who are devoted to the Traditional Latin
Mass will be unflagging to the words you wrote in Quo Primum
without any qualification or compromise whatsoever.

*I
have received an e-mail from someone who has read this part of my commentary,
accusing me of being nasty. It was not my intent to be nasty at all.
I was merely pointing out the harm of giving polls any degree of credibility
by our participating in them. Americanism influences Catholics of all
stripes, including those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass and those
who attend the Novus Ordo. I do not favor our participation
in polls. They prove nothing. They are a gigantic waste of time. My
point was not to make anyone feel bad; it was to raise a concern about
strategies that actually give credibility to things that are inimical
to the Faith. I have offered my apologies for any offense taken. None
was meant to be given.